From Dusk til Mourn

What’s good, Spirit Squad!

Today we’re gonna talk a little about the newest Magic: the Gathering set, Duskmourn: House of Horror! For anyone who hasn’t checked it out yet, Duskmourn is going to be a horror-themed set with a good amount of self-awareness. If you’re a fan of Freddy Kreuger or Jason Vorhees in the slightest, this is the set for you!

(The art on Come Back Wrong reminds me of a scene from “Pet Cemetery” that I’d rather not remember!)

Thematic elements aside, this is also a set that has a little bit of something for everyone: good competitive cards (especially if you’re a Red enjoyer), cards that may have enough potential to inspire deck brewers (looking at you, Leyline of Mutation), and even the Timmy-est of Commander cards (this is where The Mindskinner lives). All in all, a good recipe for a successful set!

Did you say Red enjoyers?

I did! I am very much not a Red enjoyer, but if you enjoy a good Patrick Sullivan deck list then this is probably your favorite set to come out in at least the last year. The first two cards that grabbed my attention for Red pilots are both pretty good creatures that I can see being played in Standard or even Pioneer lists:

Both of these two-drops are pretty good as a whole, and check the “good early, good late” box that I’d want to see in any deck I’m playing.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) allows your to filter your hand a little, a 2/3 is about what I’d want or expect from a playable 2-drop, and the Delirium clause is easier to fulfill than you’d think since the discard can help put a missing type (or two) into the Graveyard.

Razorkin Needlehead has a couple of things going for it: the first is that a 2/2 with First Strike is an excellent attacker, especially when you remember that cards like Monstrous Rage see play in both Standard and Pioneer aggro decks. The other is that the “ping” ability counts for each card your opponent draws, including the regular card for their draw step. Not quite an Orcish Bowmasters, but this is a Standard card so I think it gets a pass.

And now we come to my pick for “best card in Duskmourn”:

The Goodest Boy!

Enduring Courage is currently my pick for best competitive card in Duskmourn. Red decks are already performing just fine in Standard (read: best deck in the format), and the fact that Enduring Courage is a dog who’s pretty bad at playing dead works in the Red player’s favor. Giving everything Haste is already a thing Red loves to do, and accidental card advantage is exactly what you’d want out of a 4-drop. I expect to be sick of this card within the next month.

That’s enough about a deck you don’t even play. Anything for Spirits?

Given that there are exactly zero Spirits in Duskmourn that I’d call playable, this set is pretty sweet for Azorius fans! I think there are three cards in this set that I plan on testing with to get ahead of the Regional Championship at Washington, DC next month:

• Floodfarm Verge
• Sheltered by Ghosts
• Enduring Innocence

Floodfarm Verge is another land, like Seachrome Coast, that solves a lot of specific problems Spirits players have. The first big note on this card is that, unlike lands like Adarkar Wastes or Hallowed Fountain, you don’t have to deal damage to yourself to get your colors. This is an incredibly big deal when three of the top 10 decks in Pioneer (Rakdos Aggro, Gruul Aggro, and Boros Convoke) are incredibly fast aggro decks.

Acknowledging that a large part of the format is hyper-aggressive (we literally called this in our (Too) Good Grief! article!), the fact that Floodfarm Verge taps for specifically White on Turn 1 is a big deal. This means we can play one-mana removal spells on Turn 1 without paying life to do so. I expect that my finalized list for Washington will include 4 copies of Portable Hole in the main deck, and Floodfarm Verge is what makes this possible. Specifically White mana also means that you can play a Basic Island, Otawara, Soaring City or even a Hall of Storm Giants on Turn 2 and still have the correct colors for a combination of Portable Hole and No More Lies in the first two turns, with no pain!

(Appropriate name, right?)

All three major parts of this card are exactly what Spirits already wants to be doing, and the fact that this is an Aura isn’t even that much of a downside since Spirits are pretty good at protecting creatures! This card also just happens to solve all three of our major problems against aggressive decks:

• Cheap removal becomes expensive, thanks to Ward. This gives us time to use cards like Rattlechains more effectively in matchups where Rattlechains can be clumsy as an answer. Still gotta deal with Rending Volley, but we can always cross that bridge when we come to it.
• LIFELINK!!!!!! We’re already playing cards like Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr and sometimes Dust Animus as a way to deal with hyper-aggressive decks, and this certainly helps things in that regard.
• Removal is already a relatively weak point for Spirits. We are playing cards like Skyclave Apparition and Portable Hole, but it’s not like we’re a Temporary Lockdown or Supreme Verdict deck.

I’m very excited to put this in the sideboard of my Spirits deck and test with it the millisecond Duskmourn cards hit my grubby lil’ paws.

Last but certainly not least, Enduring Innocence is exactly the kind of card I’ve wanted access to for years, even if I didn’t know that until seeing this spoiler. Like, what if we took Tocasia’s Welcome, a card we’re already playing in Spirits sideboards, and Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr, a Lifelink creature we’ve already been playing, and had them do the Fusion Dance from Dragon Ball Z? We don’t have to guess the answer to that, it’s right here. Enduring Innocence also happens to solve some of the exact problems I’ve wanted to:

• Additional Lifelink Creatures in the main deck is a huge plus, even if the body is just a 2/1. We just spoke about how much Red there is in Pioneer at the moment, so this will be welcome in those matchups.
• Two of the most popular decks in Pioneer are playing countermagic that specifically hurts non-Creature spells. As Enduring Innocence is a creature, it dodges both Spell Pierce from Izzet Phoenix and Dovin’s Veto from Azorius Control!
• Every deck in Pioneer that isn’t named Azorius Control specifically plays removal that does damage or destroys, instead of exiling. This means that in most matchups where you’d want this for card advantage, you can reliably expect this to be on the table as an Enchantment after something like a Fiery Impulse or even Bonecrusher Giant’s Stomp.

All in all, a pretty exciting set! Duskmourn has more than enough tools for just about any Magic: the Gathering player to be excited about, but those of us playing the appropriately-spooky Spirits should be especially hyped for these next few weeks. For anyone who’s planning on playing in the Regional Championship in Washington, D.C. I’ll see you there. As for everyone else, I’ll see y’all on the next one!